advice on moving up

[teamdonkey]

after picking up the game last summer and spending several months learning it in tournaments and sit and gos, a couple weeks ago i started playing low stakes ring games (0.10 bb). After reading this forum i thought if i made 4 or 5 bb per 100 hands i'd be doing pretty well and could maybe start moving up. After 8 sessions and about 1000 hands i'm up $112, which if i understand right is 56bb/100. This has suprised me... i don't have any illusions about being a great player. My guess is my game (at the moment) fits this level extremely well. I have the bankroll to move up a level, and i plan to if another 1000 hands or so show similar results, but i have real doubts i'll have anywhere near the same kind of success. Even if i'm hitting 10bb/100 (which is still be "crushing" the game i think?), im making less money. 5bb/100 in the $1bb game would be less money, and i have my doubts i could make even that much.

So here's my question: Is this kind of thing normal? Do players typically play a lower level than they're capable of beating, because its more profitable?

[jimdmcevoy]

Just to show you that you need more hands to get any kind of idea of what your true winrate is.

And in my experience the most profitable table to play is the highest I can beat.

[cookperson]

beware as you move up the players get much better, and much more aggressive

[threadkiller]

I'm one level below you, playing the .01/.02 5NL games. My first 2500 hands were great, my next 1500 were a train wreck, and the last 750 have been decent. But at 4750 hands, I'm getting close to the 10x bankroll for the .05/.10 10NL game (I started with 9x at the 5NL game).

My plan, however, is to wait until I have both 15x buying instead of 10x, and 200 hours of two-tabling (which comes out to about 16,500 hands). I feel that I just need the practicce of running up against different styles of players before moving to a game that is probably more aggressive and probably has one more good player per table.